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Mike's Editorial: Right decision was made

Author
Mike Hosking,
Publish Date
Tue, 17 Mar 2015, 7:31AM

Mike's Editorial: Right decision was made

Author
Mike Hosking,
Publish Date
Tue, 17 Mar 2015, 7:31AM

MediaWorks, which is the company that runs TV3, did the right thing yesterday in getting rid of those clowns, who in a spectacularly short period of time have proved themselves to be little more than talentless no names with a narcissistic side we can do without.

I have some trouble with this debate in the sense I can not for a minute profess to know much about the show concerned, given  actually have a life and have never found the need to use the few moments of free time I do have to indulge in the world of Reality TV.

Not that Reality TV can't be good...because it can...it just isn't anymore. It once was, but like all good ideas it's been basically milked to death.

The simple truth of it nowadays is that, in the musical genre anyway, anyone and everyone who ever wanted to do their karaoke act in public largely has and were down to the dregs. That excludes the judges, who let's be frank are a good example of why producing a local version of any decent Reality TV concept is hard yards, given the talent pool is about a millimeter deep.

Willy Moon and his mad wife are a classic example of a production company that couldn't find real talent, so tried to manufacture it.

Here's what I do know about making TV, it will expose you.

If you're not good, simply turning up won't change that.

Which is why, by the way, Jeremy Clarkson should survive if he wants to survive, and why the world seems so interested in his story. Because despite the fact he's a yob, he's an extremely gifted yob, and even his critics in their quiet moments wouldn't work too hard at disagreeing.

The calculation is simple in this game. The more you bring to the table the more you can get away with. The clever producer or employer understands that with the brilliance comes the eccentricity, and with the eccentricity comes the trouble.

There isn't a half decent broadcaster anywhere in the world that doesn't and hasn't and won't trip up periodically and do something stupid. If they don't or haven't, they're not that good. Because if they haven't they're playing it safe, and playing it safe leads to boring broadcasting, and boring broadcasting is the domain of the beige broadcaster. The industry is full of them.

But...and here's the tricky bit, being good is an art - Moon and Kills weren't good. They were merely under the misapprehension that saying outlandish things was clever, when it wasn't.

They were operating under the delusion that rudeness gets attention, which leads to success, which it doesn't.

In other words, they didn't have the slightest clue as to how the industry works, and cl;early neither did the people who make all this crap.

TV is harder than it looks, the truly clever ones like Clarkson make it look totally easy, but even they strike trouble. The difference is that when they do, they've got currency in the bank to shelter them from the storm.

Moon and Kills didn't.

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